About the author

Justin Cone

Together with Carlos El Asmar, Justin co-founded Motionographer, F5 and The Motion Awards. He currently lives in Austin, Texas with is wife, son and fluffball of a dog.
Before taking on Motionographer full-time, Justin worked in various capacities at Psyop, NBC-Universal, Apple, Adobe and SCAD.

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8 Comments

Really? That’s what you get from this? The fact that it is set in ancient Greece and he is a general of the Spartan army is the story of the game, not an aesthetic. There is no hyper real blood, no intense sepia treatment and no extremely stylized motifs. It would be interesting to hear a civilized rationale for that claim.

To be fair, anyone not familiar with the game would probably get that feeling. I didn’t think 300, more like Gladiator, but like a ‘low-budget’ Gladiator. I’ve seen the other game footage commercials enough to feel like more probably could have been done with the footage or shot treatment to make it more God of War-esque.

I think people are confused between historical aesthetics and the art direction of recent feature films and assuming the later is the source of inspiration for this spot. Set those superficial trivial arguments aside and consider the structure of the storytelling. That’s the interesting part – Seamlessly revealing a warrior’s final thoughts before defeat by showing what they have lost is such a earnest cinematic way to put the viewer in the mindset of the gameplay.